Sarah Palin gleefully takes the media to the cleaners. And she chews up Obama's patooty and spits it back out in her latest Facebook post. I'm not going to post all of the links in her post, so if you want to see them, go to the post itself.
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The more things change, the more they stay the same with twisted media coverage of my comments. Stories from yesterday are littered with typical inaccuracies and half truths; and in our never-ending quest to hold the press accountable, here are the points that require correction:
1) I was not “interviewed” by ABC News. I had an ABC News camera in my face while I was signing things and greeting some attendees following the Susan B. Anthony List Breakfast.
2) My remarks at the NRA Annual Meeting regarding the anti-Second Amendment sentiments of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi were as follows:
“President Obama and his allies like Nancy Pelosi have been relatively quiet on the gun control front – not because they don’t want to limit your rights, but because they’re afraid of the political consequences. Don’t doubt for a minute that if they thought they could get away with it, they would ban guns, and ban ammunition, and gut the Second Amendment.” (emphasis added)
That’s what I said. And here’s what Barack Obama himself once said: “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress.” (emphasis added)
Now, what proof do we have that he would want to limit our Second Amendment rights? Well, he made some pretzel-like equivocating statements about our individual right to keep and bear arms, and he flip-flopped on his opinion in the Heller case and then still wouldn’t come out and say that the court made the right decision. But the real proof is his terrible anti-gun record as a state senator in Illinois, where he voted repeatedly in favor of banning guns and ammunition. He even expressed his support for state legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.” (This outrageous position was declared in a questionnaire, which candidate Obama later claimed he “never saw or approved,” despite the fact that his handwriting was on it – a fact which he did not dispute.)
As for Nancy Pelosi – she’s a San Francisco Democrat. That should be proof enough. But if you require more: She has an F rating from the NRA and supports gun bans and registration laws.
As noted in my remarks, I don’t believe that it’s politically expedient for them to attack our Second Amendment Rights. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t like to do so if they had the chance.
3) Despite reporters’ claims to the contrary, Obamacare does allow for public funding of abortion in myriad ways, which is why the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (speaking as the voice of authority for the Catholic Church in America) unequivocally opposed Obamacare despite the Church’s long desire for health care reform.
4) As for the remarks I made yesterday about my beautiful son, Trig, I ask that you watch my speech here and judge for yourself my intentions.
- Sarah Palin
Saturday, May 15, 2010
This Woman Knows No Fear
Reason #20089 why Sarah Palin should be in the White House: she's afraid of pretty much nothing.
Rather than just throw her token support behind Arizona's latest attempt to fix their immigration problems, Sarah Palin will join Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in a press conference this afternoon:
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The two will team up for a press conference today in Phoenix, at which they will announce a new website and a national effort to "educate America on border security and encourage support for Arizona."
Brewer's campaign spokesman, Doug Cole, said Palin is an obvious choice since she's been opining on the issue with some regularity.
Right after the law passed, Palin went on Fox News to criticize President Obama for perpetuating a racial-profiling "myth" in his portrayal of the law. Most recently, Palin encouraged an Illinois girls' basketball team to "go rogue" after an administrator canceled its trip to Arizona.
No statements from Palin were immediately available.
This is the second time she's been to Arizona recently, having traveled to both Tucson and Mesa in late March to stump for her former running mate, U.S. Sen. John McCain.
Cole said the website will try to correct what he said is wrong information about the law, and will also provide additional information on the longstanding immigration battle, by posting all of the letters sent to the federal government in the past eight years by Brewer as well as her predecessor, former Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, who now heads the Department of Homeland Security.
Jennifer Johnson, spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party, dismissed the announcement as Brewer's bid to strengthen her election prospects in the upcoming election cycle. "Sarah Palin is neither an expert on border security nor on tourism," Johnson said. "This is a transparent political stunt by Gov. Brewer under the false pretense of helping Arizona."
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Riiiiight, Jennifer. Because Obama is such an expert. Holder is too. He even went on numerous news shows to condemn the law that he hadn't even read. Brilliant people at the helm.
Johnson, Johnson, Johnson. Can't you come up with anything better than a strawman argument?
Oh, yes. Everybody please keep telling me how stupid Sarah Palin is when our Attorney General fearmongers about racism when he never even read the ten-page law.
Talk about reckless and irresponsible. Violent protests over fears that our Attorney General helped to stoke without any actual knowledge. And the Left thinks that Tea Partiers are dangerous.
Ha!
Good on you, Governors.
Rather than just throw her token support behind Arizona's latest attempt to fix their immigration problems, Sarah Palin will join Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in a press conference this afternoon:
---------------
The two will team up for a press conference today in Phoenix, at which they will announce a new website and a national effort to "educate America on border security and encourage support for Arizona."
Brewer's campaign spokesman, Doug Cole, said Palin is an obvious choice since she's been opining on the issue with some regularity.
Right after the law passed, Palin went on Fox News to criticize President Obama for perpetuating a racial-profiling "myth" in his portrayal of the law. Most recently, Palin encouraged an Illinois girls' basketball team to "go rogue" after an administrator canceled its trip to Arizona.
No statements from Palin were immediately available.
This is the second time she's been to Arizona recently, having traveled to both Tucson and Mesa in late March to stump for her former running mate, U.S. Sen. John McCain.
Cole said the website will try to correct what he said is wrong information about the law, and will also provide additional information on the longstanding immigration battle, by posting all of the letters sent to the federal government in the past eight years by Brewer as well as her predecessor, former Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, who now heads the Department of Homeland Security.
Jennifer Johnson, spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party, dismissed the announcement as Brewer's bid to strengthen her election prospects in the upcoming election cycle. "Sarah Palin is neither an expert on border security nor on tourism," Johnson said. "This is a transparent political stunt by Gov. Brewer under the false pretense of helping Arizona."
--------------
Riiiiight, Jennifer. Because Obama is such an expert. Holder is too. He even went on numerous news shows to condemn the law that he hadn't even read. Brilliant people at the helm.
Johnson, Johnson, Johnson. Can't you come up with anything better than a strawman argument?
Oh, yes. Everybody please keep telling me how stupid Sarah Palin is when our Attorney General fearmongers about racism when he never even read the ten-page law.
Talk about reckless and irresponsible. Violent protests over fears that our Attorney General helped to stoke without any actual knowledge. And the Left thinks that Tea Partiers are dangerous.
Ha!
Good on you, Governors.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Let the Girls Play Ball
It's utterly ridiculous that a high school basketball team is being drug into this whole political mess in Arizona. These are high-school girls who have worked long and hard to get to tournament position and to earn money for their trip to Arizona. To cancel that to make a political point is just plain cruel.
They're high school girls. Don't take this out on them. Let 'em play.
The point guard who grew up to be Vice-Presidential candidate feels very strongly about this issue:
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This has-been ball player/Wasilla Warrior would like to send a shout out of support to the Highland Park High School Giants Girls Basketball Team in Illinois. These girls have been working, having bake sales, and saving money for months in order play in a hoop tournament in Arizona. They’ve won their school’s first conference title in 26 years, but now because a school bureaucrat – an assistant superintendent – wants to play politics, they’re not allowed to play ball.
Keeping girls off the court for political reasons? As I said last night in Illinois: “Them’s fightin’ words.”
The assistant superintendent claims that a trip to Arizona “would not be aligned with our beliefs and values.” But apparently the school has no problem sending kids on trips to China, which has a population control policy that is anti-girl in practice – contributing to female infanticide and abandonment and sex-selective abortions. So, is China – with its many serious human rights violations (too many to list here) – “aligned” with the “values and beliefs” of the school? But our sister-state of Arizona is not? Really? This is ridiculous and totally unfair to the girls who just want to play ball. Going to Arizona to play in a tournament will not endanger them, and the ban sure doesn’t solve the problem of unsecured borders.
These boycotts of Arizona will not help the state or lead to positive change. Economic and political boycotts of our nation’s 48th state will hurt all Arizonans – including all members of the Hispanic community. If people really want to help, they should tell President Obama to do his job: secure the border. If he were to do his job, the good people of Arizona, who have been overwhelmed by violence on their border, would not feel compelled to do it for him.
In the meantime, let’s help the girls “go rogue” and go play ball. Please take a look at this Facebook page set up on their behalf.
Let’s have our own bake sale! Let the girls play ball!
- Sarah Palin
------------
And it hasn't stopped there. Amy Jacobson is working with the Governor to try and figure something out:
------------
Former high school basketball player Sarah Palin is planning to make a bank shot.
• Translation: Sneed has learned Palin, the former Republican vice presidential nominee, who is outraged the Highland Park girls basketball team trip to Arizona has been canceled "for political reasons," wants to raise money and/or find a way to get them there.
• The upshot: Palin has asked WIND radio talk show host Amy Jacobson, a fellow high school basketball player who shares Palin's anger over the trip's cancellation because of Arizona's immigration policy, to help her do it.
• The backshot: "We've been e-mailing back and forth since we met Wednesday night," said Jacobson, who helped host "An Evening with Sarah Palin," sponsored by WIND radio at the Rosemont Theatre.
In an e-mail dispatched to Jacobson Thursday morning, Palin stated: "I'm going to Arizona on Saturday ... and Amy, let's think of something we can do to show the girls we are willing to help. I can raise money for them. You can speak for me on this. It was great meeting you last night. We are on the same page."
• The money shot: It's unclear whether raising money would overcome the decision made by the school superintendent's office. The team had already raised money through bake sales, and assistant school Supt. Sue Hebson has yet to return our phone call. Meanwhile, school Supt. George Fornero, who had been silent on the matter, issued a letter Thursday after Palin made her comments -- he claims Arizona's immigration law could place "some of our students' safety or liberty" at risk because of the school's diverse student population. The trip was scheduled for December, and the makeup of its varsity team has yet to be selected for the next school year.
• Translation: Undocumented students may be participating.
• Faceshot: Meanwhile, Jacobson tells Sneed: "We've already set up a Facebook page link to bigjohnandamy.com for students and parents to state their views and/or outrage about the school decision."
• Netshot: "Sarah [Palin] and I bonded in the Green Room over basketball," said Jacobson, who feels cancellation of the basketball trip is "a horrific, monstrous joke using children for political pawns. It should be a parental decision, not a school decision."
"She [Palin] played point guard in high school, and I played small forward at John Hershey High School in Arlington Heights, and we talked about how everything you need to learn about life ... you learn on the basketball court."
"We talked about how you learned self-governing, teamwork, winning, boundaries and when to step in to help a fellow player. This sad decision is a big deal, and she wants to step in and team up to support these girls."
• The endshot: "Palin, who appeared before 4,000 Chicago area fans at the Rosemont Theatre, told the crowd: "Them are fightin' words when you say a girl can't play in the basketball tournament ... for political reasons ... so we are going to see about that."
• The potshot: In the e-mail to Jacobson, Palin also stated: "I highlighted the issue in my Chicago speech last night because I can't believe this district would think this is any kind of a solution. One of the most ridiculous school decisions I've ever heard. This district will okay student travel to China, but not Arizona because Arizona doesn't mesh with their 'values and beliefs.' But China does?! China's treatment of girls is atrocious in some areas."
• The finalshot: Jacobson, who vented her personal outrage on Fox News Channel on Thursday, tells Sneed she had to chuckle when she learned Palin was heading to Arizona on Saturday. "I thought it was perfect timing and apropos," said Jacobson. "After all, if we haven't already been to Arizona before, we should go now, spend money and help their economy."
Stay tuned.
------------------
Here's the Facebook page you can support the girls on.
UPDATE - I like this guy:
Yeah, just don't throw rocks, girls, okay? :)
They're high school girls. Don't take this out on them. Let 'em play.
The point guard who grew up to be Vice-Presidential candidate feels very strongly about this issue:
-------------
This has-been ball player/Wasilla Warrior would like to send a shout out of support to the Highland Park High School Giants Girls Basketball Team in Illinois. These girls have been working, having bake sales, and saving money for months in order play in a hoop tournament in Arizona. They’ve won their school’s first conference title in 26 years, but now because a school bureaucrat – an assistant superintendent – wants to play politics, they’re not allowed to play ball.
Keeping girls off the court for political reasons? As I said last night in Illinois: “Them’s fightin’ words.”
The assistant superintendent claims that a trip to Arizona “would not be aligned with our beliefs and values.” But apparently the school has no problem sending kids on trips to China, which has a population control policy that is anti-girl in practice – contributing to female infanticide and abandonment and sex-selective abortions. So, is China – with its many serious human rights violations (too many to list here) – “aligned” with the “values and beliefs” of the school? But our sister-state of Arizona is not? Really? This is ridiculous and totally unfair to the girls who just want to play ball. Going to Arizona to play in a tournament will not endanger them, and the ban sure doesn’t solve the problem of unsecured borders.
These boycotts of Arizona will not help the state or lead to positive change. Economic and political boycotts of our nation’s 48th state will hurt all Arizonans – including all members of the Hispanic community. If people really want to help, they should tell President Obama to do his job: secure the border. If he were to do his job, the good people of Arizona, who have been overwhelmed by violence on their border, would not feel compelled to do it for him.
In the meantime, let’s help the girls “go rogue” and go play ball. Please take a look at this Facebook page set up on their behalf.
Let’s have our own bake sale! Let the girls play ball!
- Sarah Palin
------------
And it hasn't stopped there. Amy Jacobson is working with the Governor to try and figure something out:
------------
Former high school basketball player Sarah Palin is planning to make a bank shot.
• Translation: Sneed has learned Palin, the former Republican vice presidential nominee, who is outraged the Highland Park girls basketball team trip to Arizona has been canceled "for political reasons," wants to raise money and/or find a way to get them there.
• The upshot: Palin has asked WIND radio talk show host Amy Jacobson, a fellow high school basketball player who shares Palin's anger over the trip's cancellation because of Arizona's immigration policy, to help her do it.
• The backshot: "We've been e-mailing back and forth since we met Wednesday night," said Jacobson, who helped host "An Evening with Sarah Palin," sponsored by WIND radio at the Rosemont Theatre.
In an e-mail dispatched to Jacobson Thursday morning, Palin stated: "I'm going to Arizona on Saturday ... and Amy, let's think of something we can do to show the girls we are willing to help. I can raise money for them. You can speak for me on this. It was great meeting you last night. We are on the same page."
• The money shot: It's unclear whether raising money would overcome the decision made by the school superintendent's office. The team had already raised money through bake sales, and assistant school Supt. Sue Hebson has yet to return our phone call. Meanwhile, school Supt. George Fornero, who had been silent on the matter, issued a letter Thursday after Palin made her comments -- he claims Arizona's immigration law could place "some of our students' safety or liberty" at risk because of the school's diverse student population. The trip was scheduled for December, and the makeup of its varsity team has yet to be selected for the next school year.
• Translation: Undocumented students may be participating.
• Faceshot: Meanwhile, Jacobson tells Sneed: "We've already set up a Facebook page link to bigjohnandamy.com for students and parents to state their views and/or outrage about the school decision."
• Netshot: "Sarah [Palin] and I bonded in the Green Room over basketball," said Jacobson, who feels cancellation of the basketball trip is "a horrific, monstrous joke using children for political pawns. It should be a parental decision, not a school decision."
"She [Palin] played point guard in high school, and I played small forward at John Hershey High School in Arlington Heights, and we talked about how everything you need to learn about life ... you learn on the basketball court."
"We talked about how you learned self-governing, teamwork, winning, boundaries and when to step in to help a fellow player. This sad decision is a big deal, and she wants to step in and team up to support these girls."
• The endshot: "Palin, who appeared before 4,000 Chicago area fans at the Rosemont Theatre, told the crowd: "Them are fightin' words when you say a girl can't play in the basketball tournament ... for political reasons ... so we are going to see about that."
• The potshot: In the e-mail to Jacobson, Palin also stated: "I highlighted the issue in my Chicago speech last night because I can't believe this district would think this is any kind of a solution. One of the most ridiculous school decisions I've ever heard. This district will okay student travel to China, but not Arizona because Arizona doesn't mesh with their 'values and beliefs.' But China does?! China's treatment of girls is atrocious in some areas."
• The finalshot: Jacobson, who vented her personal outrage on Fox News Channel on Thursday, tells Sneed she had to chuckle when she learned Palin was heading to Arizona on Saturday. "I thought it was perfect timing and apropos," said Jacobson. "After all, if we haven't already been to Arizona before, we should go now, spend money and help their economy."
Stay tuned.
------------------
Here's the Facebook page you can support the girls on.
UPDATE - I like this guy:
Yeah, just don't throw rocks, girls, okay? :)
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The Phony King of England
Since Robin Hood the movie is coming out, and someone recently called Robin Hood Sarah Palin with a longbow, I figured I'd dig out this old Disney clip and compare Obama to Prince John:
Obama is Stupid
Yes, ladies and gentlemen. There was a candidate running for office in 2008 who didn't know the difference between a country and a continent. Here is that candidate:
Eat your heart out, Carl Cameron.
Now, I shall go internally implode at the media's double standard, for if Palin had said this, it would have been looped and played from now until Christmas.
Eat your heart out, Carl Cameron.
Now, I shall go internally implode at the media's double standard, for if Palin had said this, it would have been looped and played from now until Christmas.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Let Bristol Have Some Fun
This story is a few days old, but I figured I'd post it here anyway.
So, the big shock is that after the Event to Prevent teen pregnancy, Bristol went out with the other girls to a local New York club:
Anyway, Salon actually defended Bristol:
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Poor Bristol Palin....
Yes, she admitted while making the rounds of daytime talk shows this past Wednesday, motherhood is a blessing (she cried at Tripp's first smile!), but that doesn't mean it was OK for her to have a kid in the first place. Those who were afraid she would rely on her famous family to support her will be relieved to know that she, according to an interview with People magazine, is actually living on her own and working a "regular" job to provide for her son without any financial help from her parents (her ex, too, finally kicked in with his child support payments)...
So far, so good.
So good that, according to the New York Daily News' Gatecrasher, Bristol celebrated a job well done by wrapping up the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy by going clubbing at the hotspot 1Oak....
Though the club is 21-and-over, the same eyewitnesses said she didn't seem to be drinking, though I, personally, would sure as hell consider myself entitled to a glass of champagne after dissecting my sex and family life on national television.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if anyone deserves a night out dancing with friends, it might be a young woman who has spent the past year working, caring for an infant, going to school and, oh yes, serving as a national symbol of fallen young womanhood, who happens to find herself in New York City and presumably with a decent baby sitter.
Surely, she was sharing the space with many 19-year-olds whose day jobs might be more easily described as "NYU student" than "frazzled mother of a 1-year-old frequently asked to declare her sexual ineligibility via press release."
(No one, I trust, needs to be reminded that Bristol's ex has done the exact opposite, at least as far as the public narrative is concerned: Clubbing might be among the most innocent activities Levi Johnston has engaged in while visiting New York City, and it's hard to think of any action that screams "sexually available" quite like posing for Playgirl.)
Last year, I pointed out that one of the things that bothers me most about the press on Bristol Palin and other teen mothers is that, thus far, they are expected to stay within a box: Their stories are narrowly focused as cautionary tales aimed at discouraging younger teens from ending up like them (i.e., pregnant) with little or no thought as to what examples they might hold for the small number of girls who do.
And one has to wonder: How many more years does Bristol have to publicly declare that her life sucks?
How many more years is she required to follow up any glowing anecdote about motherhood with some sort of dire reminder about sleepless nights and the cost of diapers?
So, the big shock is that after the Event to Prevent teen pregnancy, Bristol went out with the other girls to a local New York club:
"Bristol was there around 1 a.m. with friends," a partygoer says. "She was trying to have fun, but she looked like she was terrified that people would recognize her and start gawking. It seems like she couldn't even relax." A second denizen of the club backed up the sighting....Wow. What an utter non-story. Of course that hasn't stopped some of the Palin-haters from bashing Bristol for it, claiming that she got drunk when the article clearly states that she didn't even drink. Like someone said, "Sounds like she could have had more fun at a funeral."
So how did the dignified 19-year-old get into 1Oak to begin with?
Insists a rep for the club: "Everyone was carded."
At least she well-behaved. Says our spy: "She didn't drink at all."
Anyway, Salon actually defended Bristol:
--------------
Poor Bristol Palin....
Yes, she admitted while making the rounds of daytime talk shows this past Wednesday, motherhood is a blessing (she cried at Tripp's first smile!), but that doesn't mean it was OK for her to have a kid in the first place. Those who were afraid she would rely on her famous family to support her will be relieved to know that she, according to an interview with People magazine, is actually living on her own and working a "regular" job to provide for her son without any financial help from her parents (her ex, too, finally kicked in with his child support payments)...
So far, so good.
So good that, according to the New York Daily News' Gatecrasher, Bristol celebrated a job well done by wrapping up the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy by going clubbing at the hotspot 1Oak....
Though the club is 21-and-over, the same eyewitnesses said she didn't seem to be drinking, though I, personally, would sure as hell consider myself entitled to a glass of champagne after dissecting my sex and family life on national television.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if anyone deserves a night out dancing with friends, it might be a young woman who has spent the past year working, caring for an infant, going to school and, oh yes, serving as a national symbol of fallen young womanhood, who happens to find herself in New York City and presumably with a decent baby sitter.
Surely, she was sharing the space with many 19-year-olds whose day jobs might be more easily described as "NYU student" than "frazzled mother of a 1-year-old frequently asked to declare her sexual ineligibility via press release."
(No one, I trust, needs to be reminded that Bristol's ex has done the exact opposite, at least as far as the public narrative is concerned: Clubbing might be among the most innocent activities Levi Johnston has engaged in while visiting New York City, and it's hard to think of any action that screams "sexually available" quite like posing for Playgirl.)
Last year, I pointed out that one of the things that bothers me most about the press on Bristol Palin and other teen mothers is that, thus far, they are expected to stay within a box: Their stories are narrowly focused as cautionary tales aimed at discouraging younger teens from ending up like them (i.e., pregnant) with little or no thought as to what examples they might hold for the small number of girls who do.
And one has to wonder: How many more years does Bristol have to publicly declare that her life sucks?
How many more years is she required to follow up any glowing anecdote about motherhood with some sort of dire reminder about sleepless nights and the cost of diapers?
Carly Fiorina Sounds Good to Me
I never paid much attention to Carly Fiorina until Sarah endorsed her. Now I'm listening to her, and I swear, she sounds a lot like Sarah. I don't know why people have a problem with her. She sounds great to me:
A Few Old Pics...
In 2007, Governor Palin took some time out to "coach" a baseball game, the Muchahy Stadium Celebrity baseball Game with the Glacier Pilots. I found these on Lance Mackey's website:
Some of the captions read -
"Our Governor and VP nominee, Sarah Palin, knows how to play ball..."
"Governor Sarah Palin can smack a ball to outfield pretty darn good..."
There are other small pics where you can see the Gov in the background.
And I'm not sure when these are from. The family enjoying a basketball game. Todd has Trig in the second one:
Some of the captions read -
"Our Governor and VP nominee, Sarah Palin, knows how to play ball..."
"Governor Sarah Palin can smack a ball to outfield pretty darn good..."
There are other small pics where you can see the Gov in the background.
And I'm not sure when these are from. The family enjoying a basketball game. Todd has Trig in the second one:
Quote of the Day...
I usually never do this kind of thing, but there was a comment on this article that I just think is "the bees knees." By "Rev. Anthony Kiem":
My posting it here doesn't mean that I agree with everything the dude said. I just thought that was kind of neat.
In imperial Rome gladiators in the Coliseum greeted the emperor who watched them dueling with lions with this farewell cry,”Caesar, Morituri te Salutant, Caesar”. Today I say the same thing to you, my dear Sarah. “Moriturus te salutat, Sarah carissima!”
I am an old Catholic priest 89 years old diagnosed with prostate cancer. God comforts me as he did regarding old lady Anna in the Jerusalem temple. He permits me to watch you fending left and right to save free America from dark powers. Fight as Jean d’Arc for the Constitution, for morality that condemns abortion, homosexuality, cheating, lying, invasion of personal life, condemnation of the accused presumed to be guilty before legal hearing, capitulation before superior force even this force is destructive, bankrupting a whole nation…
The current TEA PARTY is promoting these time-honored values, and by going with them you deserve the blessings of God. I wish you GOOD LUCK. Now as Simeon and Anna, I can chant, “Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine (Now you can dismiss your servant, o Lord.”
My posting it here doesn't mean that I agree with everything the dude said. I just thought that was kind of neat.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Hillbuzz
Great post by Hillbuzz. 'Nuff said. (I'm just posting it here so I have it in my own archives):
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We’ve spotted Todd Palin a half dozen times now at events we’ve attended where Governor Palin has spoken, both on the 2008 Vice Presidential campaign trail in cities like St. Louis and Indianapolis, and in the years since, most recently in Rosemont and Washington, Illinois.
Todd’s there, in a sharp suit with colorful tie, standing behind dark, heavy curtains. He’s off to the side, out of the way backstage, watching his wife fire up the awesome on all cylinders before enthusiastic crowds hanging on her every word. There’s a twinkle in his husky blue eyes and the first twitch of a smile on a crisply-goateed impish face straining desperately to remain serious, surrounded as he is by burly men in suits with ear pieces, cell phones, iPads, and itineraries aplenty. Though the Palins are very much in the national big time now, and will be for the rest of their lives, Todd’s seemingly still very much “just Todd” — a regular, huntin’, fishin’, snowmachinin’, g’-droppin’, dude from Wasilla, married to an incredible woman he still can’t believe he was lucky enough to sweep off her feet. That smile’s a “I can’t believe we’re doing this” smile, married perfectly to a “What did I ever do to deserve a woman as awesome as this?” grin. It’s a match as natural, easy-going, and honest as the Palins themselves.
Todd’s a husband filled to bursting with pride in his wife and — like the rest of the people in whatever room in which she’s speaking — he’s simultaneously a proud American watching the 45th President of the United States taking the first steps of her nascent presidential campaign. There’s something about the way he looks at her when she’s speaking that tells us Todd’s not the least bit surprised by any of this, either. He’s always believed in her. He knew her determination and personal strength back when he watched her smoke her competition on the basketball court, when he was sitting in the bleachers marveling at the skills and prowess of the dynamo he’d soon marry. The woman who would grow up to be president — when America needed her most.
All these years later, that high school “Saracuda” is off the court and on the national stage, but she’s very much the Thrilla from Wasilla when her team — now expanded exponentially to the entire nation — is looking for its leader.
Twice in the last month we’ve had the sincere and unbelievable privilege of watching the Palins up close as the Governor delivered two important addresses in our home state of Illinois.
In both speeches, Palin cited President Ronald Reagan as a driving influence in her life and political career, drawing great attention to the fact Reagan was born and educated in Illinois — the state in which we believe Palin will officially launch her 2012 presidential bid on February 6th, 2011…Reagan’s 100th birthday. She’ll do it – we betcha – in either Tampica or Eureka, two cities in our state intimately connected to Reagan. And she’ll do it in the face of all the naysayers and talking heads in the Lamestream Media who obsessively strive every day to destroy her, to ridicule her, to mock her, and to tear her down. Because the media wants Barack Obama to win a second term, and they know Sarah Palin is the only thing that can stop that.
As supporters of Hillary Clinton, who worked tirelessly for her for two years until she suspended her presidential campaign in June of 2008, we know what it’s like to watch someone we respect and admire — someone we know would make an excellent president — come under constant and unrelenting attack from the Left and its propaganda arm (the paid spokespeople like Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Anderson Cooper, and Rachel Maddow in the agenda-driven media). We see, clearly, the Left thumbing through the Alinsky Methods playbook it employed against Hillary in 2008, desperately trying to sink Palin early, to hobble her, to take her out of contention so the media can install a losing, mayonnaise-and-cucumbers milquetoast sandwich “it’s his turn” Republican like Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty as the Republicans’ 2012 nominee — to further the media’s pursuit of handing Barack Obama a second term.
But, in speech after speech, we see Sarah Heath Palin smacking back — HARD — as she lays the foundation for her presidential campaign in soon-to-be-historic addresses delivered in Obama’s own adoptive backyard of Illinois.
When she comes to places like Rosemont and Washington, she comes to speak, but not in the droning tone of professorial Obama descended from styrofoam-pillored Olympus with his edicts of the day, acolytes scattering lotus flowers at his feet and pouring sweet nectar of Lethe into poisoned chalices for the ignorant to drink. No, Palin’s not a pretender, a poser, not someone who spent countless hours listening to tapes of Jeremiah Wright’s fiery speeches to learn the cadences he’d need to sell his snake oil with maximum theatrics. Palin is not Obama the Lightbringer, the ethereal and magical being whom Oprah crowned “The One” and legions of cultish admirers paint astride unicorns in twisted fan art and hero worship. And that’s just the Nobel Prize committee.
Palin’s still very much the concerned mom who came to her first PTA meeting with something to say, and a plan of action for taking charge and making things better in her small town in Alaska. That same spirit echoed through everything she did after running for City Council, becoming Mayor, serving on the Oil and Gas Commission, and then leading the nation’s largest state as its chief executive. Governor Palin never lost that common touch, because no matter how high the office to which she was elected, Palin was just a mom looking out for not only her own kids, but the kids of all the other moms and dads in her constituency.
She is not, and doesn’t want to be, a prophet.
She does not pretend to be a Lightbringer.
Whatever that is.
She will never be painted upon a unicorn or called anything by Oprah that’s fit for print.
She’s just Sarah Heath Palin, and when she stands before a crowd of thousands, it’s like listening to a favorite aunt, or one of our friends’ moms, taking the microphone for a minute and delivering her message in a clear and concise way everyone in the room can understand. She’s not there to read poetry or to conjure fantastical, oratorial imagery to razzle, dazzle, and ultimately bewilder her audience. Palin’s there with one mission: to tell it like it is, whether you particularly like that or not, and then give you her best reasoned options for making the mess we’re in better. It’s all so little Trig and Piper, and all the other kids out there she’s looking out for, won’t have to inherit whatever crisis someone like Obama thinks it’s appropriate to push upon the future to solve. There’s no generational theft on Palin’s watch. No sir. You betcha.
In her speech in Rosemont, Palin quoted Thomas Paine, as he thought about the terrible situation the colonists found themselves in as they prepared to wage war against Britain for their independence. Many people didn’t want to fight, because fighting was such hard work. But, Paine thought about the future, and about the generations that would follow him in posterity and he accepted that fact the calamities at hand were falling on “his watch”. Fair or not, Paine knew he had to handle “his watch” and effectively resolve the problems so that the children to follow would not have to clean up that particular mess for him.
It was shameful to steal prosperity from the future because those in the present weren’t brave or strong enough to stand up and do what’s right, no matter how hard it was.
That sentiment ties into a common theme we’ve heard Palin repeat in both Rosemont and Washington, in regards to every able-bodied American having a duty to get up every day and work hard, to get a job and be productive, and to not expect the government to be the solution to all of their problems. In this, Palin cites President Reagan famously chastising those on the Left who demand a perpetual dole with neverending handouts to take care of all their needs. ”Government isn’t the solution to the problem, it is the problem”.
Sarah Palin, practically alone in the Republican Party, is charged with the task of reminding us how simple a fact this is. Certainly no man in the GOP has the guts to stand up and shout this obvious truth. It takes a mom from Wasilla to say what needs to be said.
Palin illustrates in her speeches how revelatory simplicity can be, and how much power an ordinary woman or man yields when they just can’t take it any more, when they stand up to be heard, and they challenge the Left at every turn.
In Rosemont, Palin cited the example of a father whose daughters worked incredibly hard to fundraise to send their basketball team to Arizona to participate in a national championship. The Leftist-controlled school district in Illinois barred the girls’ team from competing, because the Democrat Party in Illinois has decided to boycott Arizona for political reasons, claiming Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s decision to enforce federal immigration laws in her state was “not in keeping with the values the school district wanted to teach”. The father in Palin’s anecdote stood up and challenged the school district, since it continues to fund student trips to China. Palin echoed the father’s question as to what sort of values the Chinese hold for women, and how the school board’s decision to send students to China supports that message — and conflicts with the actions taken against Arizona.
Palin couldn’t contain the Reaganesque smile on her face when she talked about this ordinary man standing up with extraordinary strength and courage to challenge the Leftist bullies forcing their personal politics upon his family.
“Go rogue, girls, go rogue,” Palin urged the students, telling them to find any way they could to go west to Arizona, on their own pioneer steam, to claim the berth in the championship their hard work earned them. “Speak up. Shout bullies down. Do not let them cower you”.
When Palin hears about a team of basketball players being bullied by the Left, we can clearly see the Saracuda in her emerge, clear as day, ready to take on all challengers. We pity those in her wake, and more so those in her line of attack.
“Them’s fighting words!”, Palin exclaimed, vowing to do whatever she could in the situation to make things right, and to beat the Left at whatever game they are playing with the lives of high school athletes.
She’s going to do it, too, you betcha. And more likely than not all she’ll have to do is write about those idiots behind this on Facebook and they’ll crumple like soggy snowmen in her glare. Standing up at the podium in a leather jacket, with her hair back and her glasses gleaming on her face, she looked like a Kryptonian with a radioactive stare and the ability to do the impossible, by pure force of will and God-given determination.
This being Illinois, Palin encouraged everyone before her to constantly fight the corrupt system we live under. She talked about her friends joking that she should be worried about venturing into “enemy territory” by coming so close to Chicago, of all places, but Palin noted “it’s just Chicago…it’s not like I’m heading to MSNBC”. As bad as things are on the elected level in Illinois, one of the nation’s most corrupt states, Palin constantly draws attention to the agenda-driven, biased, and DNC-wholly-owned American Lamestream Media…which has declared itself to be her own personal rogue’s gallery of stupor villains.
But, they aren’t just Palin’s sworn enemies. MSNBC, CNN, and the news bureaus of the broadcast networks are the enemies of all Americans, since their clear and present lies on every topic imaginable to curry favor with and coddle the Obama Administration are doing great damage to the country as a whole. Palin knows they are doing everything they can to destroy her, and she says “Bring it”. She knows they are consistently lying to the American people, and she ingeniously and strategically employs new media and social networking tactics to expose them.
In both Rosemont and Washington, Palin highlighted all the bullies, thugs, liars, criminals, and emotional terrorists she’s been up against in the past — those on, and off, the MSNBC payroll. She took on the old boys’ fat cat corruptocrat network in Alaska — men in smoke-filled rooms smoking cigars, lighting $100 bills on fire to amuse themselves, wallowing in the troughs fed by the big oil companies like greedy little piggies. Palin busted through the stuffy oak doors of those boardrooms and let in the sun, a Slayer arrived once in her generation to drive a stake through the hearts of these oily vampires, exposing those crooks for who they were, no matter how much they tried to stop her.
It’s what she’s going to do to the national Lamestream Media, in all its hydra forms, and what she’s going to do to the graft and corruption at all levels of both the Democrat AND the Republican parties as well. That’s bipartisanship — PALIN-STYLE.
Big Momma’s in town. She’s the new sheriff. And it’s clobbering time, folks. Enter, the HOCKEY MOM.
Which is fitting, because one of the gifts Palin received in Rosemont was a hockey puck, from the local AHL team a young Alaskan she knows plays for. During the course of her speech and the question and answer session, the hockey imagery kept resurfacing, as a metaphor for the rough and tumble of politics, where no game is ever won without standing up to the opponent who’s trying his level best to beat the absolute tar out of you.
Can you just picture, in this visual, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, John Thune, or John Huntsman out there on the ice?
Timid, shy, shrinking like violets, they’d cling to the wooden rail around the rink, afraid to skate too fast or too hard because he’d lose favor in the eyes of the media. Democrats would whack them left and right, with high sticking and all manner of foul-worthy penalty-box-deserving plays, but the media refs would glide blindly by, giving Democrats every advantage imaginable while these effete and delicate cucumbers-and-mayonnaise wimps perpetually clamor for the love the Lamestream just won’t ever give them.
But, in skates Saracuda, hockey mom, and it’s a whole new game, folks. You thought the Hanson Brothers did a number on their opponents? Sarah Palin’s one mom, with more firepower than the lot of them. Her motto, as reiterated time and again in all of her speeches, is that there’s no retreat, ever…just reloading. Her dad taught her that years ago, and she’s been teaching it to everyone who got on her bad side ever since.
And that goes for America’s enemies abroad too, as well as the enemies of democracy that are the Lamestream Media and the current Socialist-Democrat party.
In both the Rosemont and Washington speeches, Palin clearly drew a line on the ice with her sharpest skate and dared anyone in the world to lay a finger on America’s greatest friend in the world, Israel. She extolled the virtues of Earth’s pluckiest and most determined nation — a country that sits upon the gates of Hell, that is often the only thing standing between order and chaos. Israel the brave, Israel the bold, Israel our true friend and ally.
We’d imagine President Palin defending Israel with the strength of a momma grizzly taking care of her cubs…or of a hockey mom jumping the railing and hitting the ice to pull an ogre of a bully off of her kid. The pitt bull’s got lipstick — to distract you from her bite.
THAT’S what America needs in a president. Five-by-five, 24/7, baby.
Instead of Obama’s bowing, his groveling, his apologizing, and his constant pandering to Muslims, whom he’s forever worried about offending — while sticking Israel square in the eye and smashing her into the ground with complete disregard for our decades-long symbiosis. All of Obama’s “HopeyChangey” unicorns-and-rainbows delusional nonsense is severely lampooned in both of Palin’s Illinois addresses. She asks her audience to think about all the ways in which Obama buffaloed them in 2008, all the ways he cloaked himself as a Clintonian/Jacksonian moderate-to-conservative Democrat, when in reality he was always the far Leftist, anti-Israel, soft-on-terrosim radical we’ve seen him as.
Palin noted repeatedly that now, at least, our one silver lining is that Obama has a record.
At last.
As bad as it is, at least people can finally bin the invisible man to something substantive.
The man who avoided as much responsibility as possible in his quest for job after new job finally made it to the top where he’s actually established quantifiable job performance. There’s no voting “Present” anymore. There’s no presenting himself as anything other than the radical he really is. There’s no more ability to lie and obfuscate, no matter how much the Lamestream Media enables him, so long as the American people wake up, stand up, and keep paying attention.
In both the Rosemont and Washington speeches, Palin drives home this notion that Americans need to focus their attention on the serious democracy and freedom jeopardizing specifics of what the Left is doing to this country in the Obama presidency. Namely:
(1) The Left has quadrupled America’s debt and has led us down the primrose path to stink weed insolvency.
(2) The budgets are unsustainable and will approach 100% of the GDP within Trig and Piper’s lifetimes. Not on her watch, is what Palin says, and she urges the rest of us to stand up and declare this to be OUR WATCH too.
(3) Obamacare is an unconstitutional mandate from the federal government to force citizens to purchase a product from a private company and enter into a non-negotiable contract that usurps our freedoms. It must be repealed in all its forms and those responsible for it booted from office with maximum prejudice.
(4) The Left is attempting to take control of all industries, so that the union leeches can demand ever more perks for doing continuously less work, bleeding all profits dry. Without industry, there is no America, there is no entrepreneurialism, and Greece is a solid example of what happens to a bloated and lazy society that thinks the bill for all its fun and games will never come due. Palin warns the same thing will happen to America, in Trig and Piper’s lifetimes, unless we all band together and do something about the Left in November and in 2012.
(5) America must never bow to anyone. NOT EVER. Terrorists must be called terrorists. Islam must not be coddled. Muslim terrorists should not be given the rights of American citizens, and they should not be held in greater regard by the president than the innocent Americans they murder.
(6) This nation must not engage in generational theft to pay for the pork barrel flights of fancy and the corrupt deals of fat cats and Washington insiders of today.
At the ballot box, Palin calls for a Restoration and Awakening of the American spirit.
As we see her presidential campaign forming, we sense her November book will teach us more about the platform she intends to advance, centered around the notion of American exceptionalism. Unapologetically. Undeniably. Unequivocably.
The campaign itself will be branded around Alaska — and Palin’s own upbringing in the wild having to fend for herself, rely on her own independence, and to work hard in adverse conditions to get everything she wanted in life. There were no hand-outs. There was no nanny state to take care of her. She learned that if she was hungry she needed to work hard to earn or hunt for her own food. If she wanted creature comforts, she had to apply herself to the tasks required to get them. There was no welfare. There was no “Obama Money” magically floating from the sky or delivered upon the back of fuchsia unicorns. The meat came from moose. The bucks came from babysitting or waitressing. The bull comes from Washington if you believe the government owes you anything.
Self-reliance. Determination. Hard work. Independence. Entrepreneurialism. PALINISM.
With Palin’s personal narrative and ready-made Alaskan frontier campaign motif driving this charge, Americans will harken back to the cultural images that unite us, of our founding fathers birthing this nation from nothing…of the Western settlers taming the wild and building a bicoastal continental country…of all the hard work the greatest generation put into fighting the powers of fascism and communism to secure peace, prosperity, and freedom for this world.
It’s going to be mighty hard for Barack Obama and his ragtag band of loons and Leftists to argue to Americans that the country would be better off following the path of Europe, as socialism across the Atlantic implodes and the lazy, welfare-dependent, corrupt, and hapless fools in the “socialist utopia” failed states drown in oceans of their own debt.
How will Obama contrast Palin in a general election, when Palin possesses more testicular fortitude than our fey, professorial, lecturer of a president could ever muster in his wildest dreams?
Though he’ll once again try to paint everyone who opposes him as a racist, and will try to use words like “polarizing” against Palin, as magical spells to convince some out there that she’s “unelectable”, in the manner in which he used these tactics against Hillary Clinton, we believe he’ll fail miserably.
Palin’s got his number.
She’s got the media’s number too.
And, we believe, she knows EXACTLY what the RNC plans to do to her so they could push the nomination to Mitt “It’s His Turn” Romney.
Watching Palin deliver these speeches, considering all of this, we kept looking to the side of her and at Todd smiling there in the shadows, watching everything from the sidelines, just as he did at Palin’s basketball games when they were in high school.
He’s smiling because he’s proud of his wife for the fight she’s put up so far, but the smile’s deeper than that.
It’s deeper than the love he has for her, and for the constant realization of how lucky he is to be her husband.
Todd’s smiling because he knows just what Palin’s going to do to her opponents.
He knows what she’s capable of. He’s seen her field dress a moose.
Seen it a million times.
That’s going all the way back to Saracuda’s days on the court when some out of town team arrived in Wasilla and underestimated the skills Palin possessed. They fell right into her trap, and she mopped the floor with them, just as she did all of those fat cats in their smoky rooms plotting and scheming against the people of Alaska.
In every challenge she’s ever faced, Sarah Palin has stood up and given her absolute all, never backing down, never surrendering…only pausing to reload, but not to retreat.
The Left has never faced anything like her before.
The woman lives rent free in the White House already — occupying a cavernous suite in Obama’s nightmares and imagination. At 3am, our current president, Dr. Utopia, is too exhausted to answer the phone because he gets so little sleep. Closing his eyes, he hears the swoosh, swoosh, swoosh of blades slicking against the ice, bringing something strong, large, and massive his way…a thunder from the north…a polarizing force like an Arctic blast…a hockey mom and momma grizzly who is not going to let any of the Left’s usual nonsense stand in her way. It’s MOMENTUM, baby, in all caps, with a you-betcha twang.
If we were Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee, Thune, Huntsman, Daniels, and even Michael Steele, we’d get little sleep as well.
She’s coming for all of them. They should know it.
Todd knows it.
He also knows she’s going to win — if she wants it, if she sets her mind to it, and if she answers the clarion call Americans in Rosemont, Washington, Chicago, Cleveland, Rochester, Milwaukee, Anchorage, and beyond want her to hear.
RUN, SARAH, RUN!
It sure doesn’t take much to prompt a spontaneous chorus of that at a Sarah Palin speech. We’re a bunch of gay Hillary guys in Boystown cheering amongst the loudest.
Todd’s smiling because his wife’s bringing this nation together like never before, against a common foe, just as she brought all those different players together on her basketball team and won game after game against all odds.
Now that she’s in the fight of her life, when it’s not a game, it’s much much more than a game and all of our lives depend on it, Todd’s smiling because he knows just what his wife is made of…and, just as he’s always known, he must know that’s going to make her our next President.
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We’ve spotted Todd Palin a half dozen times now at events we’ve attended where Governor Palin has spoken, both on the 2008 Vice Presidential campaign trail in cities like St. Louis and Indianapolis, and in the years since, most recently in Rosemont and Washington, Illinois.
Todd’s there, in a sharp suit with colorful tie, standing behind dark, heavy curtains. He’s off to the side, out of the way backstage, watching his wife fire up the awesome on all cylinders before enthusiastic crowds hanging on her every word. There’s a twinkle in his husky blue eyes and the first twitch of a smile on a crisply-goateed impish face straining desperately to remain serious, surrounded as he is by burly men in suits with ear pieces, cell phones, iPads, and itineraries aplenty. Though the Palins are very much in the national big time now, and will be for the rest of their lives, Todd’s seemingly still very much “just Todd” — a regular, huntin’, fishin’, snowmachinin’, g’-droppin’, dude from Wasilla, married to an incredible woman he still can’t believe he was lucky enough to sweep off her feet. That smile’s a “I can’t believe we’re doing this” smile, married perfectly to a “What did I ever do to deserve a woman as awesome as this?” grin. It’s a match as natural, easy-going, and honest as the Palins themselves.
Todd’s a husband filled to bursting with pride in his wife and — like the rest of the people in whatever room in which she’s speaking — he’s simultaneously a proud American watching the 45th President of the United States taking the first steps of her nascent presidential campaign. There’s something about the way he looks at her when she’s speaking that tells us Todd’s not the least bit surprised by any of this, either. He’s always believed in her. He knew her determination and personal strength back when he watched her smoke her competition on the basketball court, when he was sitting in the bleachers marveling at the skills and prowess of the dynamo he’d soon marry. The woman who would grow up to be president — when America needed her most.
All these years later, that high school “Saracuda” is off the court and on the national stage, but she’s very much the Thrilla from Wasilla when her team — now expanded exponentially to the entire nation — is looking for its leader.
Twice in the last month we’ve had the sincere and unbelievable privilege of watching the Palins up close as the Governor delivered two important addresses in our home state of Illinois.
In both speeches, Palin cited President Ronald Reagan as a driving influence in her life and political career, drawing great attention to the fact Reagan was born and educated in Illinois — the state in which we believe Palin will officially launch her 2012 presidential bid on February 6th, 2011…Reagan’s 100th birthday. She’ll do it – we betcha – in either Tampica or Eureka, two cities in our state intimately connected to Reagan. And she’ll do it in the face of all the naysayers and talking heads in the Lamestream Media who obsessively strive every day to destroy her, to ridicule her, to mock her, and to tear her down. Because the media wants Barack Obama to win a second term, and they know Sarah Palin is the only thing that can stop that.
As supporters of Hillary Clinton, who worked tirelessly for her for two years until she suspended her presidential campaign in June of 2008, we know what it’s like to watch someone we respect and admire — someone we know would make an excellent president — come under constant and unrelenting attack from the Left and its propaganda arm (the paid spokespeople like Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Anderson Cooper, and Rachel Maddow in the agenda-driven media). We see, clearly, the Left thumbing through the Alinsky Methods playbook it employed against Hillary in 2008, desperately trying to sink Palin early, to hobble her, to take her out of contention so the media can install a losing, mayonnaise-and-cucumbers milquetoast sandwich “it’s his turn” Republican like Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty as the Republicans’ 2012 nominee — to further the media’s pursuit of handing Barack Obama a second term.
But, in speech after speech, we see Sarah Heath Palin smacking back — HARD — as she lays the foundation for her presidential campaign in soon-to-be-historic addresses delivered in Obama’s own adoptive backyard of Illinois.
When she comes to places like Rosemont and Washington, she comes to speak, but not in the droning tone of professorial Obama descended from styrofoam-pillored Olympus with his edicts of the day, acolytes scattering lotus flowers at his feet and pouring sweet nectar of Lethe into poisoned chalices for the ignorant to drink. No, Palin’s not a pretender, a poser, not someone who spent countless hours listening to tapes of Jeremiah Wright’s fiery speeches to learn the cadences he’d need to sell his snake oil with maximum theatrics. Palin is not Obama the Lightbringer, the ethereal and magical being whom Oprah crowned “The One” and legions of cultish admirers paint astride unicorns in twisted fan art and hero worship. And that’s just the Nobel Prize committee.
Palin’s still very much the concerned mom who came to her first PTA meeting with something to say, and a plan of action for taking charge and making things better in her small town in Alaska. That same spirit echoed through everything she did after running for City Council, becoming Mayor, serving on the Oil and Gas Commission, and then leading the nation’s largest state as its chief executive. Governor Palin never lost that common touch, because no matter how high the office to which she was elected, Palin was just a mom looking out for not only her own kids, but the kids of all the other moms and dads in her constituency.
She is not, and doesn’t want to be, a prophet.
She does not pretend to be a Lightbringer.
Whatever that is.
She will never be painted upon a unicorn or called anything by Oprah that’s fit for print.
She’s just Sarah Heath Palin, and when she stands before a crowd of thousands, it’s like listening to a favorite aunt, or one of our friends’ moms, taking the microphone for a minute and delivering her message in a clear and concise way everyone in the room can understand. She’s not there to read poetry or to conjure fantastical, oratorial imagery to razzle, dazzle, and ultimately bewilder her audience. Palin’s there with one mission: to tell it like it is, whether you particularly like that or not, and then give you her best reasoned options for making the mess we’re in better. It’s all so little Trig and Piper, and all the other kids out there she’s looking out for, won’t have to inherit whatever crisis someone like Obama thinks it’s appropriate to push upon the future to solve. There’s no generational theft on Palin’s watch. No sir. You betcha.
In her speech in Rosemont, Palin quoted Thomas Paine, as he thought about the terrible situation the colonists found themselves in as they prepared to wage war against Britain for their independence. Many people didn’t want to fight, because fighting was such hard work. But, Paine thought about the future, and about the generations that would follow him in posterity and he accepted that fact the calamities at hand were falling on “his watch”. Fair or not, Paine knew he had to handle “his watch” and effectively resolve the problems so that the children to follow would not have to clean up that particular mess for him.
It was shameful to steal prosperity from the future because those in the present weren’t brave or strong enough to stand up and do what’s right, no matter how hard it was.
That sentiment ties into a common theme we’ve heard Palin repeat in both Rosemont and Washington, in regards to every able-bodied American having a duty to get up every day and work hard, to get a job and be productive, and to not expect the government to be the solution to all of their problems. In this, Palin cites President Reagan famously chastising those on the Left who demand a perpetual dole with neverending handouts to take care of all their needs. ”Government isn’t the solution to the problem, it is the problem”.
Sarah Palin, practically alone in the Republican Party, is charged with the task of reminding us how simple a fact this is. Certainly no man in the GOP has the guts to stand up and shout this obvious truth. It takes a mom from Wasilla to say what needs to be said.
Palin illustrates in her speeches how revelatory simplicity can be, and how much power an ordinary woman or man yields when they just can’t take it any more, when they stand up to be heard, and they challenge the Left at every turn.
In Rosemont, Palin cited the example of a father whose daughters worked incredibly hard to fundraise to send their basketball team to Arizona to participate in a national championship. The Leftist-controlled school district in Illinois barred the girls’ team from competing, because the Democrat Party in Illinois has decided to boycott Arizona for political reasons, claiming Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s decision to enforce federal immigration laws in her state was “not in keeping with the values the school district wanted to teach”. The father in Palin’s anecdote stood up and challenged the school district, since it continues to fund student trips to China. Palin echoed the father’s question as to what sort of values the Chinese hold for women, and how the school board’s decision to send students to China supports that message — and conflicts with the actions taken against Arizona.
Palin couldn’t contain the Reaganesque smile on her face when she talked about this ordinary man standing up with extraordinary strength and courage to challenge the Leftist bullies forcing their personal politics upon his family.
“Go rogue, girls, go rogue,” Palin urged the students, telling them to find any way they could to go west to Arizona, on their own pioneer steam, to claim the berth in the championship their hard work earned them. “Speak up. Shout bullies down. Do not let them cower you”.
When Palin hears about a team of basketball players being bullied by the Left, we can clearly see the Saracuda in her emerge, clear as day, ready to take on all challengers. We pity those in her wake, and more so those in her line of attack.
“Them’s fighting words!”, Palin exclaimed, vowing to do whatever she could in the situation to make things right, and to beat the Left at whatever game they are playing with the lives of high school athletes.
She’s going to do it, too, you betcha. And more likely than not all she’ll have to do is write about those idiots behind this on Facebook and they’ll crumple like soggy snowmen in her glare. Standing up at the podium in a leather jacket, with her hair back and her glasses gleaming on her face, she looked like a Kryptonian with a radioactive stare and the ability to do the impossible, by pure force of will and God-given determination.
This being Illinois, Palin encouraged everyone before her to constantly fight the corrupt system we live under. She talked about her friends joking that she should be worried about venturing into “enemy territory” by coming so close to Chicago, of all places, but Palin noted “it’s just Chicago…it’s not like I’m heading to MSNBC”. As bad as things are on the elected level in Illinois, one of the nation’s most corrupt states, Palin constantly draws attention to the agenda-driven, biased, and DNC-wholly-owned American Lamestream Media…which has declared itself to be her own personal rogue’s gallery of stupor villains.
But, they aren’t just Palin’s sworn enemies. MSNBC, CNN, and the news bureaus of the broadcast networks are the enemies of all Americans, since their clear and present lies on every topic imaginable to curry favor with and coddle the Obama Administration are doing great damage to the country as a whole. Palin knows they are doing everything they can to destroy her, and she says “Bring it”. She knows they are consistently lying to the American people, and she ingeniously and strategically employs new media and social networking tactics to expose them.
In both Rosemont and Washington, Palin highlighted all the bullies, thugs, liars, criminals, and emotional terrorists she’s been up against in the past — those on, and off, the MSNBC payroll. She took on the old boys’ fat cat corruptocrat network in Alaska — men in smoke-filled rooms smoking cigars, lighting $100 bills on fire to amuse themselves, wallowing in the troughs fed by the big oil companies like greedy little piggies. Palin busted through the stuffy oak doors of those boardrooms and let in the sun, a Slayer arrived once in her generation to drive a stake through the hearts of these oily vampires, exposing those crooks for who they were, no matter how much they tried to stop her.
It’s what she’s going to do to the national Lamestream Media, in all its hydra forms, and what she’s going to do to the graft and corruption at all levels of both the Democrat AND the Republican parties as well. That’s bipartisanship — PALIN-STYLE.
Big Momma’s in town. She’s the new sheriff. And it’s clobbering time, folks. Enter, the HOCKEY MOM.
Which is fitting, because one of the gifts Palin received in Rosemont was a hockey puck, from the local AHL team a young Alaskan she knows plays for. During the course of her speech and the question and answer session, the hockey imagery kept resurfacing, as a metaphor for the rough and tumble of politics, where no game is ever won without standing up to the opponent who’s trying his level best to beat the absolute tar out of you.
Can you just picture, in this visual, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, John Thune, or John Huntsman out there on the ice?
Timid, shy, shrinking like violets, they’d cling to the wooden rail around the rink, afraid to skate too fast or too hard because he’d lose favor in the eyes of the media. Democrats would whack them left and right, with high sticking and all manner of foul-worthy penalty-box-deserving plays, but the media refs would glide blindly by, giving Democrats every advantage imaginable while these effete and delicate cucumbers-and-mayonnaise wimps perpetually clamor for the love the Lamestream just won’t ever give them.
But, in skates Saracuda, hockey mom, and it’s a whole new game, folks. You thought the Hanson Brothers did a number on their opponents? Sarah Palin’s one mom, with more firepower than the lot of them. Her motto, as reiterated time and again in all of her speeches, is that there’s no retreat, ever…just reloading. Her dad taught her that years ago, and she’s been teaching it to everyone who got on her bad side ever since.
And that goes for America’s enemies abroad too, as well as the enemies of democracy that are the Lamestream Media and the current Socialist-Democrat party.
In both the Rosemont and Washington speeches, Palin clearly drew a line on the ice with her sharpest skate and dared anyone in the world to lay a finger on America’s greatest friend in the world, Israel. She extolled the virtues of Earth’s pluckiest and most determined nation — a country that sits upon the gates of Hell, that is often the only thing standing between order and chaos. Israel the brave, Israel the bold, Israel our true friend and ally.
We’d imagine President Palin defending Israel with the strength of a momma grizzly taking care of her cubs…or of a hockey mom jumping the railing and hitting the ice to pull an ogre of a bully off of her kid. The pitt bull’s got lipstick — to distract you from her bite.
THAT’S what America needs in a president. Five-by-five, 24/7, baby.
Instead of Obama’s bowing, his groveling, his apologizing, and his constant pandering to Muslims, whom he’s forever worried about offending — while sticking Israel square in the eye and smashing her into the ground with complete disregard for our decades-long symbiosis. All of Obama’s “HopeyChangey” unicorns-and-rainbows delusional nonsense is severely lampooned in both of Palin’s Illinois addresses. She asks her audience to think about all the ways in which Obama buffaloed them in 2008, all the ways he cloaked himself as a Clintonian/Jacksonian moderate-to-conservative Democrat, when in reality he was always the far Leftist, anti-Israel, soft-on-terrosim radical we’ve seen him as.
Palin noted repeatedly that now, at least, our one silver lining is that Obama has a record.
At last.
As bad as it is, at least people can finally bin the invisible man to something substantive.
The man who avoided as much responsibility as possible in his quest for job after new job finally made it to the top where he’s actually established quantifiable job performance. There’s no voting “Present” anymore. There’s no presenting himself as anything other than the radical he really is. There’s no more ability to lie and obfuscate, no matter how much the Lamestream Media enables him, so long as the American people wake up, stand up, and keep paying attention.
In both the Rosemont and Washington speeches, Palin drives home this notion that Americans need to focus their attention on the serious democracy and freedom jeopardizing specifics of what the Left is doing to this country in the Obama presidency. Namely:
(1) The Left has quadrupled America’s debt and has led us down the primrose path to stink weed insolvency.
(2) The budgets are unsustainable and will approach 100% of the GDP within Trig and Piper’s lifetimes. Not on her watch, is what Palin says, and she urges the rest of us to stand up and declare this to be OUR WATCH too.
(3) Obamacare is an unconstitutional mandate from the federal government to force citizens to purchase a product from a private company and enter into a non-negotiable contract that usurps our freedoms. It must be repealed in all its forms and those responsible for it booted from office with maximum prejudice.
(4) The Left is attempting to take control of all industries, so that the union leeches can demand ever more perks for doing continuously less work, bleeding all profits dry. Without industry, there is no America, there is no entrepreneurialism, and Greece is a solid example of what happens to a bloated and lazy society that thinks the bill for all its fun and games will never come due. Palin warns the same thing will happen to America, in Trig and Piper’s lifetimes, unless we all band together and do something about the Left in November and in 2012.
(5) America must never bow to anyone. NOT EVER. Terrorists must be called terrorists. Islam must not be coddled. Muslim terrorists should not be given the rights of American citizens, and they should not be held in greater regard by the president than the innocent Americans they murder.
(6) This nation must not engage in generational theft to pay for the pork barrel flights of fancy and the corrupt deals of fat cats and Washington insiders of today.
At the ballot box, Palin calls for a Restoration and Awakening of the American spirit.
As we see her presidential campaign forming, we sense her November book will teach us more about the platform she intends to advance, centered around the notion of American exceptionalism. Unapologetically. Undeniably. Unequivocably.
The campaign itself will be branded around Alaska — and Palin’s own upbringing in the wild having to fend for herself, rely on her own independence, and to work hard in adverse conditions to get everything she wanted in life. There were no hand-outs. There was no nanny state to take care of her. She learned that if she was hungry she needed to work hard to earn or hunt for her own food. If she wanted creature comforts, she had to apply herself to the tasks required to get them. There was no welfare. There was no “Obama Money” magically floating from the sky or delivered upon the back of fuchsia unicorns. The meat came from moose. The bucks came from babysitting or waitressing. The bull comes from Washington if you believe the government owes you anything.
Self-reliance. Determination. Hard work. Independence. Entrepreneurialism. PALINISM.
With Palin’s personal narrative and ready-made Alaskan frontier campaign motif driving this charge, Americans will harken back to the cultural images that unite us, of our founding fathers birthing this nation from nothing…of the Western settlers taming the wild and building a bicoastal continental country…of all the hard work the greatest generation put into fighting the powers of fascism and communism to secure peace, prosperity, and freedom for this world.
It’s going to be mighty hard for Barack Obama and his ragtag band of loons and Leftists to argue to Americans that the country would be better off following the path of Europe, as socialism across the Atlantic implodes and the lazy, welfare-dependent, corrupt, and hapless fools in the “socialist utopia” failed states drown in oceans of their own debt.
How will Obama contrast Palin in a general election, when Palin possesses more testicular fortitude than our fey, professorial, lecturer of a president could ever muster in his wildest dreams?
Though he’ll once again try to paint everyone who opposes him as a racist, and will try to use words like “polarizing” against Palin, as magical spells to convince some out there that she’s “unelectable”, in the manner in which he used these tactics against Hillary Clinton, we believe he’ll fail miserably.
Palin’s got his number.
She’s got the media’s number too.
And, we believe, she knows EXACTLY what the RNC plans to do to her so they could push the nomination to Mitt “It’s His Turn” Romney.
Watching Palin deliver these speeches, considering all of this, we kept looking to the side of her and at Todd smiling there in the shadows, watching everything from the sidelines, just as he did at Palin’s basketball games when they were in high school.
He’s smiling because he’s proud of his wife for the fight she’s put up so far, but the smile’s deeper than that.
It’s deeper than the love he has for her, and for the constant realization of how lucky he is to be her husband.
Todd’s smiling because he knows just what Palin’s going to do to her opponents.
He knows what she’s capable of. He’s seen her field dress a moose.
Seen it a million times.
That’s going all the way back to Saracuda’s days on the court when some out of town team arrived in Wasilla and underestimated the skills Palin possessed. They fell right into her trap, and she mopped the floor with them, just as she did all of those fat cats in their smoky rooms plotting and scheming against the people of Alaska.
In every challenge she’s ever faced, Sarah Palin has stood up and given her absolute all, never backing down, never surrendering…only pausing to reload, but not to retreat.
The Left has never faced anything like her before.
The woman lives rent free in the White House already — occupying a cavernous suite in Obama’s nightmares and imagination. At 3am, our current president, Dr. Utopia, is too exhausted to answer the phone because he gets so little sleep. Closing his eyes, he hears the swoosh, swoosh, swoosh of blades slicking against the ice, bringing something strong, large, and massive his way…a thunder from the north…a polarizing force like an Arctic blast…a hockey mom and momma grizzly who is not going to let any of the Left’s usual nonsense stand in her way. It’s MOMENTUM, baby, in all caps, with a you-betcha twang.
If we were Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee, Thune, Huntsman, Daniels, and even Michael Steele, we’d get little sleep as well.
She’s coming for all of them. They should know it.
Todd knows it.
He also knows she’s going to win — if she wants it, if she sets her mind to it, and if she answers the clarion call Americans in Rosemont, Washington, Chicago, Cleveland, Rochester, Milwaukee, Anchorage, and beyond want her to hear.
RUN, SARAH, RUN!
It sure doesn’t take much to prompt a spontaneous chorus of that at a Sarah Palin speech. We’re a bunch of gay Hillary guys in Boystown cheering amongst the loudest.
Todd’s smiling because his wife’s bringing this nation together like never before, against a common foe, just as she brought all those different players together on her basketball team and won game after game against all odds.
Now that she’s in the fight of her life, when it’s not a game, it’s much much more than a game and all of our lives depend on it, Todd’s smiling because he knows just what his wife is made of…and, just as he’s always known, he must know that’s going to make her our next President.
You Want A RINO? Vote for Chuck DeVore
No, I'm not calling Chuck a RINO. But if you vote for him there's a very good chance you'll hand the nomination to the real RINO in the race, Tom Campbell.
Carly Fiorina has been called a RINO for days now by those who support Chuck. Fine. Go ahead and waste all of your ammunition aiming at the wrong person. Great strategy. No wonder the Democrats win.
Tom Campbell is pro-choice, anti-Israel, and he's spent five terms in Washington D.C. Why do I not hear wailing from the rafters about how he's the establishment candidate? Why am I hearing conservatives complain about pro-life, pro-Israel Carly? Should you not focus on making sure Tom Campbell doesn't get it?
What am I missing here?
Why are Chuck's fans targeting Carly? If you question her conservative credentials, you should be going crazy over Campbell's.
The primary is still about a month away. If you're a Chuck supporter until then, that's great. Go for it. And if it looks like Chuck might be able to pull it off in June, hey, vote for him.
But if a month from now the polls look a lot like they do right now with Chuck trailing the other two, then please, PLEASE put your pettiness aside and vote for Carly.
Otherwise you'll split the conservative vote and you really WILL end up with a RINO in Boxer's seat, and his name will be Tom Campbell.
If he doesn't win, it doesn't have to be the end for Chuck. If you really want to see him in Washington, guess what? There will be House elections again in two years. Tell him to give that a try. He'll already have the supporters, the recognition in conservative circles, and a good start with the organization to pull it off.
And say Carly ends up failing miserably. Then when the Senate seat comes back around he can kick her butt out. I'll help him do it.
This movement is just getting started. Work. Learn. You don't have to take the whole country all in one year. This is just the beginning.
And about the Palin endorsement, listen, I can empathize. There are some second-tier candidates that I would love to see win. If the 'Cuda came out and endorsed their opponents, pretty much solidifying the defeat of my guy, I'd be bummed too.
But you know what? I'd get over it because the ultimate goal is to win back the Congress in November, not split hairs.
Passion is great, and I'm glad you have it for Chuck. But sometimes passion is short-sighted.
Carly Fiorina has been called a RINO for days now by those who support Chuck. Fine. Go ahead and waste all of your ammunition aiming at the wrong person. Great strategy. No wonder the Democrats win.
Tom Campbell is pro-choice, anti-Israel, and he's spent five terms in Washington D.C. Why do I not hear wailing from the rafters about how he's the establishment candidate? Why am I hearing conservatives complain about pro-life, pro-Israel Carly? Should you not focus on making sure Tom Campbell doesn't get it?
What am I missing here?
Why are Chuck's fans targeting Carly? If you question her conservative credentials, you should be going crazy over Campbell's.
The primary is still about a month away. If you're a Chuck supporter until then, that's great. Go for it. And if it looks like Chuck might be able to pull it off in June, hey, vote for him.
But if a month from now the polls look a lot like they do right now with Chuck trailing the other two, then please, PLEASE put your pettiness aside and vote for Carly.
Otherwise you'll split the conservative vote and you really WILL end up with a RINO in Boxer's seat, and his name will be Tom Campbell.
If he doesn't win, it doesn't have to be the end for Chuck. If you really want to see him in Washington, guess what? There will be House elections again in two years. Tell him to give that a try. He'll already have the supporters, the recognition in conservative circles, and a good start with the organization to pull it off.
And say Carly ends up failing miserably. Then when the Senate seat comes back around he can kick her butt out. I'll help him do it.
This movement is just getting started. Work. Learn. You don't have to take the whole country all in one year. This is just the beginning.
And about the Palin endorsement, listen, I can empathize. There are some second-tier candidates that I would love to see win. If the 'Cuda came out and endorsed their opponents, pretty much solidifying the defeat of my guy, I'd be bummed too.
But you know what? I'd get over it because the ultimate goal is to win back the Congress in November, not split hairs.
Passion is great, and I'm glad you have it for Chuck. But sometimes passion is short-sighted.
Why Palin is So Successful
Warner Todd Huston outlines just one reason why Sarah Palin is so successful:-------------
Americans love to be led by what they feel are ordinary folks. They want to assume that their sons or daughters could become a representative, senator, or even a president. It’s a can-do nation filled with folks that feel they are just as good as the next citizen in line. This is why Sarah Palin is so successful.
The reason for this goes back even before the American Revolution. Americans built this nation by the sweat of their brows, the brawn of their backs and their God-given abilities, a veritable natural aristocracy among men. They looked to leaders from their own strata and looked askance at any that claimed a noblesse oblige.
In fact, it was seen as so untoward for America’s early leaders to appear ambitious of position that politicians did not directly campaign for office nor did they often publish policy discussions under their own names. This is the reason why the Federalist Papers were published under the name “Publius” instead of under the names of Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, its actual authors. It wasn’t even widely known who wrote our most famous political treatise until a decade after its publication.
This desire to appear un-ambitious and “regular” didn’t stop with the founders either. When President Andrew Jackson ushered in the “era of the common man” in the 1830s this idea that just anyone could become president reached new heights. Famed visitor Alexis de Tocqueville, who noted that the common man in America enjoyed an unprecedented level of dignity and success, made this a central theme of his famous book “Democracy in America.”
Many presidents were presented as the fellow next door. William Henry Harrison was a “log cabin” candidate (even though he was born to a well-to-do family), Lincoln was “Honest Abe” the “Rail Splitter,” Grant was the hard-fighting general that struggled his way up by his own efforts with no family help, Truman was just a regular guy. On the other hand, many presidential candidates that lost did so in part because they could not shake the accusation that they were “elitists.”
John Quincy Adams, for instance, lost his second run in small part due to this perceived elitism. Closer to our own day it was widely thought that Democrat Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson was too brainy and high class to appeal to the average American and he went down to defeat to the regular guy Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower. Not long ago both Al Gore and John Kerry were denigrated as too upper crusty to appeal to most Americans. They didn’t seem like regular folk to the regular folks. Heck, even with his Hollywood pedigree, Ronald Reagan stressed his hardscrabble upbringing as a common man in Illinois.
It’s a long, long tradition of the upper crust trying to take on the mantle of the lower classes and losing elections if they fail.
Then came Barack Obama. Mr. Obama is one of the few American presidents easily able to overcome the appearance of the nose-in-the-air, scion of the university that he is and get elected anyway and he didn’t do it by appearing as if he was a commoner. So, Obama is one of the exceptions to the usual American political practice of putting on the cloak of the common man. The American public decided that his upper crustiness wasn’t disqualifying but since he’s been in office his arrogance has come to grate on more and more Americans. This sneaking suspicion that Barack Obama doesn’t like us lowly Americans very much only adds to Palin’s appeal.
Writing for the New York Review of Books Jonathan Raban recently stumbled upon the core appeal of Sarah Palin to right of center Americans. He attended the Tea Party convention in Tennessee in March and met a woman who was effusive over Palin saying that she was a “normal person like you and me.”
“She was me! She’s so down-to-earth! If Sarah was sitting here with us now, she’d be just a normal person like you and me. You could say anything to her. She’s not like a politician—she’s real. And Sarah always keeps her word. If Sarah promises something, you know she’ll do it. She’s just am az ing.”
And therein, with one quote, lies Palin’s appeal to America. This is something that Barack H. Obama, with his nose ever in the air, can never achieve.
Palin’s success at becoming a focal point for conservative America is only facilitated by the hatred of her that the Old Media wallows in. It is they that have propelled her past what might have been her likely expiration date having lost her bid for vice president. I mean, let’s face it, few losing vice presidential candidates are ever heard from again politically. Palin, though, has been a glaring exception to that down and forgotten rule for losing vp candidates. And the reason for that is the Old Media’s obsession with her coupled with her own innate ability to hit the Old Media where it lives.
The media mercilessly attacked Palin from the second the McCain campaign announced her as its pick for the number two slot. They attacked her children without pause and smeared her with lies at every turn. But one of the main things that the Old Media’s overt, wild-eyed attacks on Palin did was to cement her in the minds of potential supporters as the quintessential woman of the common people.
There are hundreds of examples, but let’s take a recent one. On May 5, New York Magazine posted a report on Palin’s appearance at the Time 100 gala. Every last word of this report is dripping with sarcasm, hatred, and condescension. But that all this snark comes from a “New York” Magazine only cements her as the representative of the commoners that look askance at anything New Yorkish.
For NY Mag, Jada Yuan and Tali Yahalom — yes it took two of them to roll out these Palin jabs — Gov. Palin is painted as uncaring toward her daughter Piper, callous of her husband’s needs, and completely addicted to the glare of media lights. It doesn’t help this New York rag’s position with “the folks” that the two reporters don’t sound remotely “American,” either. It all just cements Palin’s position as the queen of Jill and Joe Six-Pack.
But the Old Media can’t help itself, can it? They despise her very existence and must indulge their inner schoolyard bully by constantly attacking her.
At some level, despite the anguish that the Old Media have caused Sarah Palin and her family, that same media has made her what she is today; the representative of the average folks.
The reason for this goes back even before the American Revolution. Americans built this nation by the sweat of their brows, the brawn of their backs and their God-given abilities, a veritable natural aristocracy among men. They looked to leaders from their own strata and looked askance at any that claimed a noblesse oblige.
In fact, it was seen as so untoward for America’s early leaders to appear ambitious of position that politicians did not directly campaign for office nor did they often publish policy discussions under their own names. This is the reason why the Federalist Papers were published under the name “Publius” instead of under the names of Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, its actual authors. It wasn’t even widely known who wrote our most famous political treatise until a decade after its publication.
This desire to appear un-ambitious and “regular” didn’t stop with the founders either. When President Andrew Jackson ushered in the “era of the common man” in the 1830s this idea that just anyone could become president reached new heights. Famed visitor Alexis de Tocqueville, who noted that the common man in America enjoyed an unprecedented level of dignity and success, made this a central theme of his famous book “Democracy in America.”
Many presidents were presented as the fellow next door. William Henry Harrison was a “log cabin” candidate (even though he was born to a well-to-do family), Lincoln was “Honest Abe” the “Rail Splitter,” Grant was the hard-fighting general that struggled his way up by his own efforts with no family help, Truman was just a regular guy. On the other hand, many presidential candidates that lost did so in part because they could not shake the accusation that they were “elitists.”
John Quincy Adams, for instance, lost his second run in small part due to this perceived elitism. Closer to our own day it was widely thought that Democrat Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson was too brainy and high class to appeal to the average American and he went down to defeat to the regular guy Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower. Not long ago both Al Gore and John Kerry were denigrated as too upper crusty to appeal to most Americans. They didn’t seem like regular folk to the regular folks. Heck, even with his Hollywood pedigree, Ronald Reagan stressed his hardscrabble upbringing as a common man in Illinois.
It’s a long, long tradition of the upper crust trying to take on the mantle of the lower classes and losing elections if they fail.
Then came Barack Obama. Mr. Obama is one of the few American presidents easily able to overcome the appearance of the nose-in-the-air, scion of the university that he is and get elected anyway and he didn’t do it by appearing as if he was a commoner. So, Obama is one of the exceptions to the usual American political practice of putting on the cloak of the common man. The American public decided that his upper crustiness wasn’t disqualifying but since he’s been in office his arrogance has come to grate on more and more Americans. This sneaking suspicion that Barack Obama doesn’t like us lowly Americans very much only adds to Palin’s appeal.
Writing for the New York Review of Books Jonathan Raban recently stumbled upon the core appeal of Sarah Palin to right of center Americans. He attended the Tea Party convention in Tennessee in March and met a woman who was effusive over Palin saying that she was a “normal person like you and me.”
“She was me! She’s so down-to-earth! If Sarah was sitting here with us now, she’d be just a normal person like you and me. You could say anything to her. She’s not like a politician—she’s real. And Sarah always keeps her word. If Sarah promises something, you know she’ll do it. She’s just am az ing.”
And therein, with one quote, lies Palin’s appeal to America. This is something that Barack H. Obama, with his nose ever in the air, can never achieve.
Palin’s success at becoming a focal point for conservative America is only facilitated by the hatred of her that the Old Media wallows in. It is they that have propelled her past what might have been her likely expiration date having lost her bid for vice president. I mean, let’s face it, few losing vice presidential candidates are ever heard from again politically. Palin, though, has been a glaring exception to that down and forgotten rule for losing vp candidates. And the reason for that is the Old Media’s obsession with her coupled with her own innate ability to hit the Old Media where it lives.
The media mercilessly attacked Palin from the second the McCain campaign announced her as its pick for the number two slot. They attacked her children without pause and smeared her with lies at every turn. But one of the main things that the Old Media’s overt, wild-eyed attacks on Palin did was to cement her in the minds of potential supporters as the quintessential woman of the common people.
There are hundreds of examples, but let’s take a recent one. On May 5, New York Magazine posted a report on Palin’s appearance at the Time 100 gala. Every last word of this report is dripping with sarcasm, hatred, and condescension. But that all this snark comes from a “New York” Magazine only cements her as the representative of the commoners that look askance at anything New Yorkish.
For NY Mag, Jada Yuan and Tali Yahalom — yes it took two of them to roll out these Palin jabs — Gov. Palin is painted as uncaring toward her daughter Piper, callous of her husband’s needs, and completely addicted to the glare of media lights. It doesn’t help this New York rag’s position with “the folks” that the two reporters don’t sound remotely “American,” either. It all just cements Palin’s position as the queen of Jill and Joe Six-Pack.
But the Old Media can’t help itself, can it? They despise her very existence and must indulge their inner schoolyard bully by constantly attacking her.
At some level, despite the anguish that the Old Media have caused Sarah Palin and her family, that same media has made her what she is today; the representative of the average folks.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Why Sarah Endorsed Carly
When it comes to some conservatives having a problem with Palin endorsing Fiorina, all I ask is that fairness be applied. If you're going to beat the Governor over the head for this "unforgiveable sin," then please, ostracize these organizations as well, for they too have committed the sin of endorsing Carly Fiorina:
California Farm Bureau
National Right To Life Committee
The California Pro Life Council
Susan B. Anthony’s List
New Majority California
Maggie’s List
Orange County Taxpayers Association PAC
The reasoning behind a Carly Fiorina endorsement is laid out quite well by the California Pro-Life Council here:
-------------
Months ago we were in an enviable position, both candidates were pro-life. Pro-life Assemblyman Chuck DeVore was running and Carly Fiorina, who had made public statements of being pro-life. What remained was assertaining just how real those commitments were.
Fiorina is the former Chairman of Hewlett-Packard and her pro-life comments were in contrast to the typical Silicon Valley 'culture' of monied Republicans. Her pro-life commitment meant she would be risking the alienation of some of her 'pro-choice' Rockerfeller Republican friends. It turned out that Fiorina was indeed genuine and has been endorsed by the Susan B. Anthony List which only endorses 100% pro-life candidates.
Fiorina has since met with National Right to Life Committee leadership and committed to very specific issues of pro-life public policy. Board members of California ProLife also met with her and all have been impressed by her genuine and heartfelt commitment to the cause of Life.
All of the election's dynamic changed when pro-abortion candidate Tom Campbell moved from the Governor's race to the U.S. Senate Race.
Would this create a scenario we've seen too many times before? The pro-life candidates split the vote between them allowing the pro-abortion candidate to become the nominee. We hope not.
The Board of California ProLife has been watching this race carefully and hoping that Campbell would not pose a threat, but now the scenario is requiring incisive action. DeVore has been attacking Fiorina for not being conservative 'enough' because she is seen as competing for his conservative base. And Campbell has continued to gain in the polls posing as a conservative.....
Chuck has had a very hard time demonstrating the ability to raise the funds necessary to compete in a state the size of California, and this has been frustrating to many involved.
Who will have the resources to close the gap on Campbell and then turn around and do the same to Boxer?
While DeVore is indeed pro-life and familiar to us all, Fiorina is clearly better situated to fight an incredibly expensive campaign in the most costly state of the union....
California ProLife Council PAC has added its endorsement as well. CPLC's endorsement of Carly is not a repudiation of Chuck DeVore as much as it is an earnest desire to defeat both Tom Campbell and Barbara Boxer.
----------
Now, of course more factors went into it for Palin than just the pro-life issue, but the reasoning is sound. The point is that this was to take the nomination away from Tom Campbell. Period.
As Techno so articulately notes:
California Farm Bureau
National Right To Life Committee
The California Pro Life Council
Susan B. Anthony’s List
New Majority California
Maggie’s List
Orange County Taxpayers Association PAC
The reasoning behind a Carly Fiorina endorsement is laid out quite well by the California Pro-Life Council here:
-------------
Months ago we were in an enviable position, both candidates were pro-life. Pro-life Assemblyman Chuck DeVore was running and Carly Fiorina, who had made public statements of being pro-life. What remained was assertaining just how real those commitments were.
Fiorina is the former Chairman of Hewlett-Packard and her pro-life comments were in contrast to the typical Silicon Valley 'culture' of monied Republicans. Her pro-life commitment meant she would be risking the alienation of some of her 'pro-choice' Rockerfeller Republican friends. It turned out that Fiorina was indeed genuine and has been endorsed by the Susan B. Anthony List which only endorses 100% pro-life candidates.
Fiorina has since met with National Right to Life Committee leadership and committed to very specific issues of pro-life public policy. Board members of California ProLife also met with her and all have been impressed by her genuine and heartfelt commitment to the cause of Life.
All of the election's dynamic changed when pro-abortion candidate Tom Campbell moved from the Governor's race to the U.S. Senate Race.
Would this create a scenario we've seen too many times before? The pro-life candidates split the vote between them allowing the pro-abortion candidate to become the nominee. We hope not.
The Board of California ProLife has been watching this race carefully and hoping that Campbell would not pose a threat, but now the scenario is requiring incisive action. DeVore has been attacking Fiorina for not being conservative 'enough' because she is seen as competing for his conservative base. And Campbell has continued to gain in the polls posing as a conservative.....
Chuck has had a very hard time demonstrating the ability to raise the funds necessary to compete in a state the size of California, and this has been frustrating to many involved.
Who will have the resources to close the gap on Campbell and then turn around and do the same to Boxer?
While DeVore is indeed pro-life and familiar to us all, Fiorina is clearly better situated to fight an incredibly expensive campaign in the most costly state of the union....
California ProLife Council PAC has added its endorsement as well. CPLC's endorsement of Carly is not a repudiation of Chuck DeVore as much as it is an earnest desire to defeat both Tom Campbell and Barbara Boxer.
----------
Now, of course more factors went into it for Palin than just the pro-life issue, but the reasoning is sound. The point is that this was to take the nomination away from Tom Campbell. Period.
As Techno so articulately notes:
If I were part of his [DeVore's] team or a strong supporter I would be furious with Palin as well. And I probably might even post my feelings on right-wing blogs as many Devore supporters have done to voice my anger.
Folks, Sarah Palin is not stupid. She knew that her endorsement of Fiorina would invoke a strong reaction and backlash. She probably thought long and hard about intervening in the primary contest but I believe she gathered the evidence that Boxer is vulnerable in November and that Campbell had a good chance of prevailing if the lay of the land did not change with Fiorina and Devore splitting the right-of-center vote and Campbell coming up the middle with moderates.
Sarah is playing the part of a deus ex machina and with that comes risk which I believe she is fully aware of, but Sarah knows Boxer is vulnerable but also knows Devore cannot win the GOP primary.
Thus she endorsed Fiorina to consolidate the right-wing vote.
She endorsed before the primary to take the race away from Tom Campbell. Period.
They waited to see if Devore would gain enough steam to pull it off, and he didn't.
And there's nothing really wrong with Fiorina, so I don't see what on earth the big deal is.
If Campbell wasn't in it, Sarah might have stayed out of it until after the primary. But he's in it and he stands a good chance of winning the primary, and that's that. And if he wins it, that's bad. Get it?
I haven't been a supporter of Fiorina. I haven't been a supporter of anybody in the race, actually. And yes, Devore might have a chance of beating Boxer. With our country the way it is right now, a tin can might be able to beat Boxer. However, a Chuck endorsement by Palin would have split the vote between him and Fiorina at best and Campbell would have won.
The primary is between Carly and Campbell at this point. Any independents and so forth who might vote in the GOP primary would probably be most likely to choose from those two as well. Some might go for Chuck, but not enough.
Must not let Campbell get it. Period. Therefore, throw support behind whoever can beat him, who, at this point, is Carly.
Now, maybe Chuck will pull off a huge upset. If that happens, great. But I'm not counting on it.
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